It's so annoying to watch movies with "russian" people talking like foreigners. But this movie was really well done. It's such a pleasure to hear perfect russian.
The Intouchables / May 25, 2012 / Do yourself a favor and watch it
Ryan's Russian is very weak in this movie. Most visible it is in the scene where he has to order the two russian guards to take off their boots -- he tries to say "Remove boots" twice, but each time, the word he uses for "Remove" is different - one time, he messes it up ("Snimajte butinky" and "Skydajte butinky").
It could be approximated to me giving you the orders, in English:
"TAKE OFF boots!"
"LAKE OFF boots"
you wouldn't understand the second, and neither would the soldiers there.
And when at the beginning of the movie he speaks to the russian president, his pronounciation is also quite weak.
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In fact, the Ukrainian guards spoke Polish and not Ukrainian.
Fact number 2 - when spotting the foreigner, they should probably yell in Russian, because Ukrainian is considerably less known (and in fact, spoken only in 1/3rd of Ukraine, believe me, this is a fact).
The Russian spoken from Affleck was just atrocious and laughable. Same applies to almost everyone excluding Schreiber.
"Ukrainian is considerably less known (and in fact, spoken only in 1/3 of Ukraine, believe me, this is a fact".
Actually, I don't believe you because it would seem that as of 2001, at least, 67% of Ukraine's population declared Ukrainian as their native language. However, the really puzzling thing about this scene was that Schreiber kept yelling in English, even though he apparently 'did' speak Russian and must have also been aware that 1) Russian and Ukrainian are mutually intelligible to a considerable degree and 2) most Ukrainians do speak Russian as a second language. Incredibly stupid behaviour.
"facts are stupid things" Ronald Reagan
It was rather far from being perfect. As the previous poster has already pointed out, Affleck's Russian was very weak, and as for Ciarán Hinds who played russian president - well, he was slightly better but still had A LOT of moments when it was obvious his native language was English. They did threw in some native Russian speakers in the supporting cast though - but that's what they do with all Hollywood blockbusters nowadays.
shareApparently Ciarán Hinds had about two weeks to learn his lines in a language he didn't speak that uses an alphabet he could not pronounce. I'll have to take your word for it that his pronunciation was actually pretty good but in the DVD extras they all seemed pleased with his efforts (but I guess they would say that, wouldn't they).
shareOn the commentary, Clancy was stunned when the director told him the actor wasn't Russian. Considering how much Clancy nitpicks on there (including that Cathy isn't fat enough like everyone in real life), he's genuine about it.
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"Fine. You want to eat? Let's see if you can eat... PIZZA!!!"
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Totally agreed with the OP!
Prostitute: What the *beep* are you doing?
Johnny: I'm gonna kill a bunch of people.
Actually as being Russian myself, I was kinda impressed by Hinds' Russian when he's introduced to Ryan in the movie. I was like "wow", good job Cirian, I can understand you so well, but then layer in the movie, I heard him slip up a bit, especially when he needed to talk fast that's where he was talking with big accent, but overrall he did pretty good. At least it was not disgusting to listen to him, so, yeah, he was good.
shareIdk, Ciaran Hinds's pronounciation sounded mostly pretty terrible to my ear - sometimes to the point it was barely recognizable as Russian. The rhythm of the language was totally off.
"facts are stupid things" Ronald Reagan